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1011 

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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AIMS AND METHODS 



IN 



CLASSICAL STUDY. 



BY 



WILLIAM GAEDISTEK HALE, 

50] 

4.t 



Professor op the Latin Language and Literature in 
Cornell University. 






-oo><2KjOo- 



y^^'i OF COa 



BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY. 

1888. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1887, by 

WILLIAM GARDNER HALE, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



J. S. CusniNQ & Co., Pbinteks, Boston. 



I DEDICATE THIS ADDRESS 
TO MY FRIEND 

PROFESSOE E. P. MORRIS 

WHOM I -VVOULD FAIN 
PERSUADE. 



Oninis hie sermo noster non solum enumerationeni oratorum, 
verufn etia?n pr accept a quaedam desidcrat : 93. 319. 



AIMS AND METHODS IN CLASSICAL 

STUDY. 

An Address delivered at the Meeting of the Massa- 
chusetts Classical and High School Teachers' 
Association, Boston, 1887. 



I HAD planned to speak to you to-day of the various 
phases of the classical education, — the study of the 
Greek and Latin literatures as bodies of thought, the 
study of the forms and constructions of the languages, 
the study of the history of the peoples, the study of 
public and private life, the study of art. I had planned 
to discuss the relation of these studies to one another, 
and to speak with some detail of the methods by which 
certain of them might best be pursued. But at the 
very outset I find a difficulty in my path. Six months 
ago one would have thought oneself safe in assuming a 
common opinion in regard to the aim of all this. One 
would then have said that, while either the classics or 
the natural and physical sciences, properly dealt with, 
would teach young students that indispensable and rare 
accomplishment, the art of thinking, yet they greatly 
differed as regards the things brought before the mind ; 
and that in the power of the great literary men of 
Greece and Rome to stimulate thought, to teach a 
severe taste, to form those qualities of mind and char- 



6 AIMS AND METHODS 

acter which come with a largei\outlook on human life 
and a broader sympathy, lay their special value in 
a system of liberal education. But since that time a 
pamphlet has appeared, in an important series of mono- 
graphs on education, in which the view has been upheld 
that this common agreement of the past was an error. 
It is there maintained that the humanistic conception 
of classical study has passed away, and that, under 
the mighty impulse of modern science, the scientific 
conception has taken its place, so that the great aim 
of classical study (as regards the schools, at least, this 
is clearly said) should be, and is inevitably coming to 
be, to teach scientific procedure, — namely, observation, 
generalization, and proof. And in this paper, after an 
admirable sketch of the currents that have prevailed 
from time to time in classical study, the view just 
stated is urged Avith such vigor and weightiness that 
one must certainly set oneself to debating very carefully 
in his own mind whether it is or is not just, and must 
have his whole manner of looking at classical education 
largely determined by the decision to which he is 
brought. Such a debate I have held with myself, and 
have not come to share the opinion of the writer. I do 
not know your convictions. But at any rate, until there 
shall again be a clear consensus of opinion on this 
fundamental point, no one can properly speak of the 
study of Greek and Latin without raising the ques- 
tion. What is the aim of it all? That is, then, of 
necessity, our first inquiry to-day. By a singular 
irony of fortune, the writer of that p)amphlet is the 
gentleman in whose company I have the honor — a 
twofold honor, therefore — to address you, — Professor 
Morris, of Williams College. The irony has, however, 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 7 

a kindly side ; for, as we appear together before you, 
with opportunities assured us for discussion after our 
papers have been read, we may hope to reach, in 
amicable controversy, a common ground, and possibl}'' 
even a common settlement of the important point at 
issue. 

At once we are involved in perplexity. The gen- 
eral tone of Professor Morris's preface is not in harmony 
with the tone of the address which forms the body 
of his pamphlet. Both preface and address must there- 
fore be considered. 

I quote from the former: — 

The classical work of the college, at least in the first two 
years, should undoubtedly deal mainly with the literature and 
history, with the contents of the writings, not with the form of the 
language. The arguments, therefore, which would naturally be 
used in support of the study of Latin in these years are those 
which are drawn from the excellence of the literature, from the 
political and social history of the Eoman race, and especially from 
the fact that the most important elements of modern civilization 
have come from or through Rome. Taking the whole curriculum 
together, from preparatory school to university, these are beyond 
a doubt the chief aspects of the question, and it would be a matter 
of regret to the writer should their omission here be understood to 
indicate any doubt on his part of their weight as arguments, or of 
their supreme importance in contributing to culture. The reason 
for passing them over is a twofold one : first, because they have 
been often and fully presented ; and, second, because any discus- 
sion of the college work brings in at once the question of elective 
studies, '^r a question upon which the writer had no warrant for 
entering. 

To this statement I heartily assent. It is true, it is 
admirable. Than the phrase " their supreme impor- 
tance in contributing to culture " nothing could be 
more satisfactory. And even if, noting the words, " the 



8 AIMS AND METHODS 

classical work of the college, at least in the first two 
years," and the title of the monograph, " The Study 
of Latin in the Preparatory Course," one suspected a 
certain exclusion which augured ill for the schools, 
yet one would hope that Professor Morris's perception 
of the supreme value of the aspects he has spoken of 
would keep him, when he comes to speak of the philo- 
logical side of classical study, from claiming for that 
side more than its just — its great but not supreme — 
importance. 

At the beginning of the address, the writer says, 
" If any of the views which follow shall seem partisan 
in spirit, I can only remind jqm of the extreme diffi- 
culty of looking with entire impartiality at one's favor- 
ite study, and beg you to make such allowance for 
professional prejudice as you may think best." Let 
me, similarly, say that my own special field of investi- 
gation is precisely what I judge Professor Morris's to 
be, namely, comparative syntax. Li any case, we start 
together, in that our special personal interest is on the 
scientific side, rather than the humanistic. If, then, the 
discussion of the question which Professor Morris has 
raised should lead me to the opposite conclusion, it will 
not be in consequence of natural bias. 

The keynote of the address is struck in the prelimi- 
nary statement on page 1. 

Those who deshe to see the classics retaining their place must 
face the fact that the literary spirit of fifty years ago has passed 
out of sight, and that the scientific spirit has taken its place. I 
disclaim, therefore, at the outset, any share in an attempt to recon- 
stitute the college curriculum upon the basis of a mainly literary 
training, — an attempt which would result, in my opinion, simply 
in a prolonged struggle, disastrous to our higher scholarship, and 
certain to eud in defeat. 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. \) 

Professor Morris then proceeds to show that classical 
scholarship has passed through four stages since the 
Reuaissance, and that the phrase, "the study of Latin," 
has correspondingly four senses. It may mean "lin- 
guistics," learning to read the language, as it did in 
its first stage ; it may mean history and literature, as it 
did in its prevailing spirit in its second stage ; it may 
mean rhetoric and composition, the acquisition of the 
ability to write Latin as an elegant accomplishment; it 
may mean scientific study. " It is now," says Professor 
Morris, " in the fourth stage. It means, and is to mean, 
the science of Latin philology." That this is the drift 
of the times is shown, he argues, in several ways. First, 
the great majority of the books on classical subjects 
now produced in Germany are of a scientific character. 
Secondly, students are said (I question the statement) 
not to read so much Greek at Harvard College to-day 
as they did at Marietta College, for example, forty 
years ago; and even in Germany, as a German professor 
laments, students who have spent twelve or fifteen years 
upon Latin cannot read it after all. " The reason," says 
Professor Morris, " is that teachers of Latin in oiir col- 
leges are teaching philology, not linguistics." Further 
(and here we get the gist of Professor Morris's view) : — 

The most conclusive proof that philology has taken the place of 
linguistics is to be had from a consideration of what actually occurs 
in the preparation and recitation of a Latin lesson. 

A chapter in the preparatory lesson-book deals, let us say, with 
the genitive. It begins by referring the student to certain places 
in the grammar where the laws of the genitive are given ; for in- 
stance, that a noun in the genitive <lepends upon another noun. 
Having mastered this law, the student goes on to the exercise, 
where he finds sentences from wdiich he must select the genitives 
according to their previously learned terminations, just as he might 



10 AIMS AND METHODS 

select the bits of quartz from a pile of pebbles by the quality of 
hardness. This is scientific observation, the selection of individ- 
ual objects according to a known characteristic. 

The genitives thus collected are, then, in the process of trans- 
lation, tested according to the new law ; the student examines the 
sentence in which each is found to discover the noun upon which it 
depends. He will perhaps find that in some cases the form has 
misled him, and, in the absence of a noun to which they may be 
referred, some genitives must be rejected as locatives or dativer, as 
among his pieces of quartz the test of the acid might reveal bits of 
some other hard mineral. This process, repeated with every genitive 
in the exercise, is a drill in scientific generalization, differing from 
the same process in actual scientific investigation, only by the fact 
that the law to be discovered is pointed out at the beginning. It 
is at the same time scientific proof, since it is the testing of the 
law under conditions constantly varied. 

Still more like the actual work of the investigator is the prepa- 
ration of a chapter in Caesar, since here there is no artificial ar- 
rangement of sentences, but nouns of all forms, and sentences of 
different structure follow each other in confusion, as the botanist 
finds by the roadside here a clover, there a fern. 

Now all this has nothing to do with reading Latin. 

" We no longer study Latin in our schools [page 14] 
in order to learn Latin ; we study it, and teach it, with 
primary reference to the science of philology."^ We are 
giving our students drill in scientific observation, scien- 
tific generalization, scientific proof. And '' all this has 
nothing to do with reading Latin." 

We see clearly now the field of our amicable, and, I 



1 The phrase science of philology is used by Professor Morris here 
and in most places in the sense of scientific procedure in dealing with 
the language, not in its common sense of comparative phonology or 
comparative syntax. For my own part, I wish that we might come in 
this country, as the Germans have come, to use the phrase classical 
philology as covering the whole field of classical study, — language, 
literature, history, institutions, archeology. 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 11 

hope, helpful controversy. But before entering upon 
it, I am disposed to tiike breath a moment, and to admit 
that, so far as the facts claimed are concerned, something 
of what Professor Morris says would appear to be sadly 
true. I should gladly be relieved of a fear that far too 
much work in the preparatory school has, I will not say 
nothing to do with reading Latin, but quite inadequate 
relations to that matter. To this we shall return. 

Let us now, having seen Professor Morris's position, 
approach the subject afresh, but from essentially the 
same point of view. 

The spirit of the age demands scientific method in all 
intellectual activity that comes within the domain of 
science. The scientific habit of mind is a tool of which 
each one of us, no matter in what field he is to work, must 
become the possessor. We must all learn to observe, to 
generalize, and to prove. We shall so learn, if we are 
under the guidance of a wise instructor, himself possessed 
of the power and the confirmed habit of observing, of 
generalizing, and of proving, and engaged in teaching 
us things the dealing with which calls for the exercise 
of those operations. Things the dealing with which did 
not call for the considerable exercise of these operations, 
even though they might have in themselves an indis- 
pensable importance (the case of French and German^ 
as is excellently shown by Professor Morris, is in point), 
would fail to give us entire satisfaction as material for 
education. The ideal subjects for education, then, would 
be such as should combine interest and importance of 
results with the considerable exercise of observation, 
generalization, and proof, in arriving at those results. 

So far, we probably agree. We must all, at any cost, 
learn to observe accurately, and to reason accurately 



12 AIMS AND METHODS 

from the facts observed. We must also learn the 
thmgs that are of interest and importance, even if we 
have to go elsewhere for training in accurate observa- 
tion and correct inference. The ideal subjects for 
education would be those that come under both heads, 
those that are of interest and importance, and that, 
at the same time, require to be dealt with by processes 
that will form the scientific habit of mind. Professor 
Morris has admirably shown the great value of classical 
studies on the latter score, a value equal, in the early 
stage of education, to that of what we may briefly call 
the physical studies, — and, for the present, at least, 
even superior, on account of the availability of the 
apparatus, namely, books, and the poverty of the 
schools in laboratories. But to possess this value is 
not enough. For if the physical sciences, even if they 
should prove to be less suited at the beginning, or even 
finally, to teach young minds habits of true observation 
and right inference, yet are of more interest, of greater 
importance, — in a word, are more practical, — then we 
ought to reorganize the work of our preparatory schools 
and colleges by substituting the physical sciences in place 
of the classics. Up to this point, also, I hope we have 
advanced in company. 

So, then, we have come to the question. What is in 
the best sense practical? what is of interest and impor- 
tance in the average human life ? This is a very old 
question, because it is fundamental. But, old as it is, 
and easy as in truth it is, no settlement has yet been 
reached. It is thought by many that the current of 
opinion is setting in the direction of a belief that the 
things which are of interest and importance to the 
average man are the constitution and behavior of 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 13 

chemical agents, of fluids, of the undulations that pro- 
duce in us visual and acoustic results, of plants, of 
animals, of the heavenly bodies. For some men, indeed, 
these are certainly the practical things ; and we can, 
therefore, at once concede a part of the debatable ground. 
To the man who is to devote his life to the building of 
railroads and bridges, the most important thing is 
the knowledge how to build an excellent road and an 
excellent bridge. To the man who has a genius for in- 
venting improved machinery, the most important thing 
is to understand what has been done, and to have his 
powers developed that he may do still better. But we 
are not discussing the education of the civil or mechani- 
cal engineer, the electrician, the practical chemist, the 
inventor. It is a pity if there is not time to educate 
them first as if they were to be average untechnical 
men, and then to add thereto their education as special 
workers. But let that go. We are speaking of the 
needs of men of the untechnical classes, lawyers, doc- 
tors, journalists, ministers, business men, men of leisure. 
The truism will be granted us that man is a creature of 
varied and wide-reaching capacities. To educate him 
is to arouse these capacities and set them into action, to 
make him alive to all. that touches most vitally the life 
of his race, — that is to say, to all that is of supreme 
interest and importance. What, then, are the matters 
which to the average untechnical man are of supreme 
interest and importance? On this question I shall call 
both a man of science and a man of letters to help me ; 
quoting first from the address on the Mission of Science, 
delivered before the American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science, at the .meeting in Philadelphia 
in 1884, by Professor Thurston : — 



14 AIMS AND METHODS 

What is the object of dn-ectiiig this enormous array of intellec- 
tual power into the field of scientific inquiry? Having settled 
upon the form of the system, and the details of the mechanism by 
which this development of science is to be secured with greatest 
ease, accuracy, and rapidity, to what purpose is this great scheme 
to be applied? AVhat is the use, and what is the object, of sys- 
tematically gathering knowledge and of constructing a great, an 
elaborate, system having the promotion of science as its sole end 
and aim? What is " The Mission of Science"? 

The iDission of science is the promotion of the welfare, material 
and spiritual, physical and intellectual, of the human race. It has 
for its purpose and its object the improvement, in every imaginable 
way, directly and indirectly, of the mind and the body, the heart 
and the soul, of every human being. It is charged with the duty 
of seeking the cause of every ill to which mankind is subject; of 
finding a remedy for every misfortune to which the race is now lia- 
ble; of ameliorating every misery known to sage or savage; of 
seeking ways of giving to all every comfort and all healthful luxu- 
ries ; of reducing the hours of toil, and offering to the relieved la- 
borer intellectual occupations that shall at once take from him all 
temptation to waste his life in indolence and dissipation, and give 
him aid in his feeble efforts to climb upward into a higher life ; of 
enlightening the world intellectually; of giving it leisure to per- 
fect itself ethically, and to gain those elements of character that 
are so sadly crushed out by the terrible pressure of our incomplete 
civilization, sentiments of honor and justice, feelings of love and 
sympathy, and a spirit of devotion that can only be found highly 
developed in either the simple child of nature, or in the soul that 
has time, in the midst of a driving world, to reflect, to aspire, and 
to grow. The true mission of science is one that extends far be- 
yond the workshop of its servants ; it extends far beyond our ken, 
and beyond the range of our mental grasp and farthest view. The 
great fact that material prosperity is the fruit of science, and that 
other great truth, that as mankind is given opportunity for medi- 
tation and for culture, the higher attributes of human character 
are given development, are the best indications of the nature of the 
real mission of science, and of the correctness of the conclusion 
that the use and the aim of' scientific inquiry are to be sought in 
the region beyond and above the material world to which those 
studies are confined. 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 15 

This is the position taken on the question, what is of 
supreme interest and importance, by a scientific man 
of great success, himself professionally engaged in di- 
recting the training of mechanical engineers. " The use 
and the aim of scientific inquiry are to be sought in the 
region beyond and above the material world to which 
those studies are confined." We can agree to that. 

And now for the answer of a man of letters, Dr. John- 
son, given in his Life of Milton : — 

But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and the 
sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the 
great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we 
provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful 
or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge 
of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history 
of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody 
truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Pru- 
dence and justice are virtues and excellences of all times and of all 
places. We are perpetually morahsts ; but we are geometricians 
only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is neces- 
sary ; our speculations upon matter are voluntary and at leisure. 
Physiological learning is of such rare emergence that one may 
know another half his life without being able to estimate his skill 
in hydrostatics or astronomy ; but his moral and prudential char- 
acter immediately aj^pears. 

Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools, that supply 
most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most 
materials for conversation ; and those purposes are best served by 
poets, orators, and historians. 

Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantic or para- 
doxical ; for, if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my 
side. It was his labor to turn philosophy from the study of nature 
to speculations upon life ; but the innovators whom I oppose are 
turning of£ attention from life to nature. They seem to think that 
we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of 
the stars. Socrates was rather of the opinion that what we had to 
learn was how to do good and avoid evil. 



16 AIMS AND METHODS 

Dr. Johnson twice needs supplementing here. We 
all at times suspect him of imperfect susceptibilit}^ to 
the highest qualities of imaginative literature ; and it is 
in precisely these qualities that literature reaches the 
expression of that which is highest in the human mind. 
Secondly, we more than suspect him of imperfect sym- 
pathy with that instinct of human nature which, as 
Professor Morris has told us, has come to play so mighty 
a part in all our thinking, the imperious desire to know 
the causes of things, — in a word, the scientific spirit. 
We are all scientific nowadays. The human mind has 
taken all knowledge to be its province. We all desire 
to know the whole of the universe, and the place and 
part of man in it. 

But we cannot know well both the record of nature 
and the record of man. We must choose, for our main 
occupation, the one to which our bent inclines, and 
thenceforth depend, for our acquaintance with the other, 
upon the saving friction of our necessary intercourse 
with the great thinking and writing world. We shall 
do right to follow our tastes, whatever they may be. 
So much is assured us, and rightly assured us, at some 
point or other, in the new education. But if our tastes 
lead us to the knowledge of that which is the great and 
frequent business of the human mind, we shall choose, 
with Dr. Johnson, to understand man himself, as he has 
shown himself in history, and above all, as he has shown 
himself in that more intimate history which is called 
literature. 

We are dealing here with a point upon w^hich a strange 
misconception exists. It appears to be constantly as- 
sumed that, " discipline " apart, the study of mathemat- 
ics, of mechanics, of chemistry, of electricity, supplies 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 17 

not only to the technical worker, but equally to tlie 
average man, something which he will be constantly 
putting into use, while the study of the classical litera- 
tures and cognate subjects supplies the student with 
idle things, mere accomplishmeuts, out of all touch with 
daily life. The misconception arises from the fact that 
the so-called scientific studies lead to those marvel- 
lous triumphs over our natural lot which have added 
so much to the comfort and pleasure of living, and to 
the interchange of thought. But from this fact nothing 
rightly follows except that the technical worker, and 
especially the man of inventive genius, must have the 
scientific training. As for the rest, the blessings of the 
steam-engine, the telegraph, the electric light, fall alike 
on the scientific and the unscientific. I am a devout 
believer in the importance of giving to every student 
mathematical training — an absolute indispensable in 
the best liberal education — and a training in some 
two or three of the natural sciences, — such as botany, 
physics, and chemistry, — sufficient to afford him some 
understanding of the way in which scientific work is 
carried on, and a clear conception of that regular recur- 
rence of like phenomena under like conditions which 
we call law.i But I am an equally devout believer in 



^ I do not believe that, in a well-planned education, the study of 
the classics could wholly replace the study of the physical and natural 
sciences. For myself, my first heartfelt conviction that in this world 
like phenomena recur under like conditions was got, not from the study 
of the development of the classical tongues, but from work in ento- 
mology, outside of the college curriculum, carried on, in successive sea- 
sons, under the direction of a classmate who is now a special worker in 
that field. The development of a language is equally under wliat we 
call law; but the phenomena are too difiicult, and the tests too little 
obviuus, to serve the purposes of a young student. 



18 AIMS AND IMETHODS 

the importance of giving to every student of possible 
humanistic tastes some knowledge of those great litera- 
tures, ancient and modern, which, with the great works 
of art, constitute the most precious — because wholly 
unreplaceable — achievements of the human race. I 
de]3recate the apparent tendency of our times, which 
threatens to carry us on to a point at which education 
will split sharply into two parts : the serious student of 
literature knowing nothing of natural science, and the 
serious student of natural science having no catholic 
introduction to literature, or respect for it. It is the 
most crying need of education to-day that workers in 
the classics and workers in the sciences should hold 
together and insist that education consists of a fairly 
broad basis of knowledge and sympathies, together with 
a thorough mastery of one's own powers, obtained by 
an exclusive devotion, during the latter part of a college 
course, to a few things — be they classics, or modern lan- 
guages, or mathematics, or natural science — to which 
the student's individual turn of mind leads him, in a 
system of absolute freedom. But, so long as they do 
not hold together, I must express my conviction not 
only tljat it is the very bane of mathematical and sci- 
entific studies in a liberal education to maintain that 
their value lies in their practical applications, but 
also that it involves an absolute untruth. The uses of 
mathematics which the average untechnical man makes 
in his daity life are the operations of addition, subtrac- 
tion, multiplication, and division, applied to calculations 
of which the reckoning of interest is probably the most 
complicated; and these matters he learned, not in col- 
lege, nor in the higli or corresponding private school, 
but in the grammar school. As for geometry, the aver- 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 19 

age man uses very little of it, while algebra commonly 
drops wholly out of his life, as clean forgotten as our 
friends the objectors to the classics tell us Greek and 
Latin are. And precisely the same thing is true of any 
practical application, in the life of the average untech- 
nical man, of acoustics, optics, and the like, and pretty 
nearly true of the forgetting of them. And so Dr. John- 
son is practically right. " Physiological learning is of such 
rare emergence that one may know another half his life 
without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics 
or astronomy ; but his moral and prudential character 
immediately appears." The things that are of supreme 
interest and importance to the average man, and even 
to the technical worker, so far as he can give himself 
that leisure to perfect himself ethically which Professor 
Thurston says it is the mission of science to provide 
some day, in some measure, for the whole human family, 
are, not the things of external nature, but, to use a 
phrase that has grown familiar, the things of the mind. 

We have, then, so far as strong natural bent does not 
intervene, two requirements to meet in choosing the 
studies which shall constitute that ideal and indis- 
pensable part of education for which we have been 
inquiring on behalf of the boy who is to be one of the 
great multitude of untechnical workers. They must 
deal with the things of the mind, and they must beget 
a right habit of mental procedure. 

Now the study of Greek and Latin, properly pursued, 
satisfies the second requirement, so far as the preparatory 
school is concerned, as well as the study of science can 
satisfy it, and, on account of- the availability of the ap- 
paratus, even better ; whereas, as regards the things of 
the mind, kinematics, acoustics, electricity, and the rest 



20 AIMS AND METHODS 

do not deal with them at all, — while the Greek and 
Roman literatures deal with them in an unsurpassed 
degree, beside being a large and important part of the 
record of the intellectual ancestry of the life which we 
now live. 

And here, even if some of my hearers do not now 
go with me, I am sure that Professor Morris and I 
are still together. Yet a difference of emphasis — an 
important matter in educational affairs — begins to 
appear. He has disclaimed, at the outset, any share in 
an attempt to reconstitute the college curriculum upon 
the basis of a training mainly literary, while I, for rea- 
sons already given, should gladly see it reconstituted 
upon such a basis, — taking the word literary (though 
I should prefer the word humanistic) in the sense in 
which he ' himself has used it on page 6 (toward the 
bottom) as standing for " the study of the form and con- 
tents of the Latin writers, the gradual discovery of the 
facts, and then of the meaning, of Roman history, the 
investigation of archseological problems, the apprecia- 
tion of poetic style, the comprehension of ancient ethics 
and philosophy, the knowledge of Roman daily life and 
private character." But I pass at once to the most seri- 
ous divergence. I have spoken of a difference of tone 
between the preface and the body of the monograph. 
With the utmost desire to find a reconciliation which 
shall leave to the latter the spirit of the former, I am 
forced to understand Professor Morris's view as follows: 
that, though the classical work of the college, at least in 
the first two years, should undoubtedly deal mainly with 
the literature and history, yet " in our lower schools we 
no longer study Latin in order to learn Latin ; we study 
it and teach it with j^rimary reference to the science of 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 21 

philology" ; or, to put tlie matter more explicitly, as lie 
elsewhere does, with primary reference to the forming 
of the scientific spirit, through training, mainly in the 
field of syntax, in observation, generalization, and proof. 
This is very clear language, and, whatever may be said 
in the preface, it is in exact keeping with the under- 
standing with which readers rise from the pamphlet. 
And even if Professor Morris has only been temporarily 
led into a disproportionate statement through that clear 
conception of the value of training in the fundamental 
scientific processes which enabled him to state so well 
the power of properly conducted classical study to give 
this training, yet the view which he has enunciated has 
undoubtedly gained some vogue, and his monograph is 
cited in support of it. In the opinion, therefore, of many 
people, among them professional workers in the classics, 
themselves actively engaged on the scientific side, the 
fallacy of the monograph needs to be pointed out. 

The fundamental error in Professor Morris's view, 
then, is this : he exalts a habit of mental procedure into 
the position of the acquisitions gained by that xDrocedure. 
What the naturalist demands of the student is that he 
shall use scientific x^rocedure to attain results ; namely, 
a knowledge of the things that specially belong to the 
province of natural history. The student of nature is 
not forming the scientific spirit at one time, and getting 
results at another : he is building up the scientific spirit 
in the very act of seeking for results. Just as im- 
peratively, our classical student must get his results in 
the very activity wdiich, rightly guided by the teacher, 
develops in him the scientific habit of thinking. These 
results, as wo have seen, are, in their highest distinctive 
aim, an acquaintance with, and love of, the things that 



22 AIMS AND METHODS 

belong especially to literature, — the things of the mind. 
But the literatures in question are hidden in unknown 
tongues. Then the great aim of the preparatory schools 
should be to teach students, by the best means that the 
teacher's art can devise, to read those unknown tongues, 
and to teach them to read them in such a way as to 
leave as slight a barrier as possible between the reader 
and his author. The main duty of the schools is, in a 
word, to apply the operations of observation, generaliza- 
tion, and proof to the acquisition of the powder to read 
Greek and Latin. All the benefits of grammatical study 
on which Professor Morris bases the claims of the study 
of Latin are conserved by the larger theory which I 
advocate. For the efforts which have been made of late 
to dispense largely with grammar in teaching students 
to read Greek and Latin are futile. The workman 
must know the use of his tools ; and the ^vorkman who 
wastes the most time in getting this knowledge is 
the one who longest postpones getting it.^ It can be 
shown with certainty that not one iota of rigorous think- 
ing is sacrificed by a true method of studying Greek 
and Latin with primary reference to learning to read 
them. But the teacher's responsibility does not stop 
with teaching his students to read. A boy is born into 
the world with tastes and aptitudes in embryo. It is 
the great privilege of the teachers of Greek and Latin 
in the preparatory schools to hate the opportunity of 
developing at once the scientific habit and whatsoever 

1 Pessime de pueris merentur praeceptores qui aut regulas nullas 
tradunt aut certe statim abiciunt, et magnifice promittunt fore ut usu 
loqueudi discantur constructiones, . . . Omnino cnim danda est 
opera, ut tarn diu in arte detineantur adolescentes, donee perfect! 
grammatici, donee arcliitecti sermonis et absoluti artifices evaserint- — 
Melaxciitiion. » 



IE CLASSICAL STUDY. 23 

of aptitude there may be for the things represented by 
the word literature, — to give the student his first hirge 
outlook into human life, outside of the country farm 
and the city street. So, then, the young student of 
Greek or Latin should be made to feel from the outset 
that his study of the mechanism through which the 
Greeks or the Romans expressed thought is to the end 
that he may be able to read and enjoy a great literature, 
and that, through every page of that literature actually 
read, he is preparing himself to read with more and 
more understanding and enjoyment in the field that re- 
mains. All this time, we quite agree with Professor Mor- 
ris, we must be forming in our young pupil, by incessant 
watchfulness, the habit of exact observation and sound 
reasoning. That is one of our interesting and very 
solemn duties — one of the indispensables. But there 
are twt) indispensables. What can we conceive to be 
gained, even for Professor Morris's aim, by throwing 
aside or even obscuring one of them, except that very 
inability to read Latin, and that indisposition to read 
it, which we all deplore ? Why impoverish the young 
spirit, up to the time of his leaving the school for the 
university, by feeding him on method without results, 
on form without substance? Is it because the human- 
istic spirit is so rife in our nineteenth century that 
he cannot fail to catch it, so in the air that he draws 
it in with every breath, while the scientific habit is 
so foreign to the feeling of the times that everything else 
must be thrown aside to further the birth of it in the 
young mind? I had supposed the opposite. But at 
any rate, if we wish to prepare for the universities a 
student who shall feel that Latin and Greek are indeed 
dead, that they have nothing to do with human life in 



24 AIMS AND METHODS 

the nineteenth century, and who, as early as tlie elec- 
tive system of his college allows him, shall shift his sci- 
entific activity into a field contiguous to the life of to- 
day, then let us draw a division liue between the 
school and the college, and let the latter attempt to 
beget a literary feeling, a humanistic spirit, in students 
who have thus far been primarily dwelling in cases, 
modes, and tenses, and in these things, furthermore, 
not as passports to the literature, but rather as a daily 
drill in the fundamental scientific processes. 

We have now agreed, I hope, upon a statement of the 
twofold aim for the classical work of the preparatory 
school, — to teach the student, by methods of exact 
observation and inference, the art of reading Greek and 
Latin, to the end that he may be able easily to acquaint 
himself later with those great commentaries on human 
life, the Greek and the Roman literatures; and at 
the same time to deal sympathetically with such parts 
of these literatures — some of them of the highest 
importance — as come within the curriculum of the 
schools. 

What, then, shall be the method by which we shall 
teach this on which all the rest is largely dependent, — 
the art of reading Greek and Latin ? 

We are all too much enlisted in the same cause to 
allow me to fear that I shall give offence when I say 
that we, preparatory teachers and college teachers alike, 
fail to give our students a reading power in Greek and 
Latin. What they get is not the power to read Latin, — ■ 
to confine what I have to say to that language, — but 
the confirmed habit of attempting to "dig out" the 
meaning by a slow, painful, and dangerous process. We 
set our students to work at learning to read Latin by 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 25 

a method founded on unreason, a method very similar, 
except in its lack of the element of pleasurable 
success, to that by which Jack Horner, in the nurs- 
ery rhyme, got the treasures of the pudding-dish into 
his mouth, — a method which refuses to think the 
thought as the Roman thought it, and substitutes 
instead a process of hunting up one thing, wherever 
it may be in the length and breadth of the sentence, 
and then another, perhaps far removed, and then an- 
other, to be patched upon the first, and then another to 
go with the second, and then another, and another, and 
so on, with the blessing of Heaven on the result, or not, 
as the case may be. 

This is — I speak with a very near approach to exact- 
ness — the process regularly taught in the books that 
teach anything at all upon the subject in starting a stu- 
dent upon his career in Latin. ^ This is the best method 
that the study of thousands of teachers in this shrewd 
age has succeeded in establishing for the understanding 
of the meaning of a Roman sentence. But it is not 
the method of the Roman forum and the Roman dinner- 
table. The Roman orator spoke his sentence straight 
through, from beginning to end, one word at a time, 
giving his hearers no opportunity to begin with his 
main sentence, unless he himself began with it, never 
turning upon his tracks to enable them, after discover- 
ing his verb, to go back and hunt up the modifiers of 
his subject, and then to go back again and collect, from 
beginning to end, the modifiers of his predicate. The 
Roman diner-out told his anecdote one word at a time, 

1 I am indebted to Dr. Bacon, the editor of the Academy, for per- 
mission to use again a portion of an article contributed by me to that 
journal (February, 1887). 



26 ATMS AND METHODS 

in the order in which we now find it. And in some 
way or other, hy indications somehow strown along the 
sentence^ the mass-meeting in the forum and the host 
at the dinner-table nevertheless understood ! That was 
the ancient method. What, then, shall we say of the 
modern method? Simply that it is the method of de- 
spair. It assumes from the outset that the mind of 
to-day is not competent to detect, while the Roman 
sentence moves steadily on, those indications of mean- 
ing which sufficed for the better-endowed Roman mind, 
and it accordingly substitutes for the Roman way slow 
and painful processes which could find no possible 
defence except upon a theory that they are the best of 
which an inferior age is capable. 

My own teaching for years has proceeded upon a 
very different plan. I have believed that the modern 
mind could be brought to understand Latin suited to its 
particular stage of advancement in a graded process pre- 
cisely as the Roman mind understood it. The method 
employed under this spirit of hope may be succinctly 
stated in the general directions to the teacher : Being for 
a time content to move sloAvly, in tlie certainty of great 
speed by and by in the event of success, select a short 
Latin sentence and put it upon the board, one word at 
a time, asking your students, as each new word is written, 
what the Roman found in the position, the inflection, and 
the signification of that word to convey to him meaning 

— what light it threw backward upon so much of the 
sentence as was already past, what light it threw for- 
ward upon that part of the sentence which still remained 

— what indication of the speaker's thought, in short, 
the Roman found in one word and another, while the 
sentence moved steadily on, so entirely sufficient that, 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 27 

when the last word was spoken, the full idea of the 
speaker had been communicated to the hearer's mind. 
Guide the student through this wherever he needs 
guidance. Unhappily, he will for some time need it in 
large measure, for the absolutely reversed process by 
which, after the sentence is all over and its meaning 
has been " dug out," we deal with syntax in the exer- 
cise of belated parsing, leaves the pupil's mind very 
helpless when he is suddenly asked to apply his knowl- 
edge to the interpretation of syntactical indications 
in situ. Avail yourself of the resources of the whole 
class, drawing out one point after another as you ques- 
tion listeners whose interest and attention are sure to 
be entire. Next put a piece of paper into the hands of 
each of them, and, taking up a new sentence, and 
writing one word at a time upon the board as before, 
set at each word a formal question or succession of 
questions to be answered formally, but succinctly and 
rapidly, upon the student's paper. Let the substance 
of these questions be. What indications of meaning are 
there here for the word itself? what light does it throw 
backward upon the words already past, the bearing of 
which was left in momentary suspense by the Roman 
way of thinking? what possibilities are there of con- 
structions to follow, if the word is one that requires 
something else to complete its meaning, and that some- 
thing else has not preceded it? and is there among 
these possible completing constructions any one that 
you may fairly regard as probable? 

Then tell him to study his next lesson by himself in 
the same way, guarding himself at every point from 
looking ahead in the sentence by keeping the remainder 
always covered from sight as he moves on (a sheet of 



28 AIMS AND METHODS 

common note-paper can easily be cut to insure this), and 
to be prepared at the next meeting of the class to tell, 
rapidly and precisely, how he did it. Let this go on for 
some time. Frequently repeat the exercise with which 
you began, of putting a sentence upon the board, one 
word at a time, with formal questions for terse written 
answers. After a few weeks, cease to write the sen- 
tence yourself, but have the student write it as you pro- 
nounce it. Give one Avord at a time, asking questions 
for written answers, as before. Direct that the answers 
be placed below, while the Latin sentence constantly 
grows at the top of the paper. After a few weeks, let 
there be no more writing of the Latin words ; but in all 
other respects conduct the exercise as before, — with the 
exception that, as certain kinds of indications of mean- 
ing in the individual word and in frequently recurring 
types of combination become familiar to your students, 
you will cease to ask questions on these points, and will 
devote yourself to new ones introduced in the sentences 
chosen. In no very long time, you will have made your 
class familiar, from an entirely practical point of view, 
with all the commonly recurring constructions and types 
of combination. And you will find that, throughout this 
time, the method you have been using will have been 
doing as much as lies within the power of human art to 
break up that sad inaccuracy of observation and inconse- 
quence of inference which, in school and college, lead 
the teacher in his gloomier hours to doubt the power of 
education. You will discover that an active or a passive 
ending, a mode or a tense sign, the mark of a dative or 
an ablative, produces a discernible effect upon the mind 
of the student who, in the exercises described above, 
has been required to tell for every word when reached^ 



IN" CLASSICAL STUDY. 29 

and hefore advancing a step farther, the precise signifi- 
cance of each of these indications of meaning. And — 
what is more, and, indeed, the soul of the whole pro- 
cedure — you will find that these graspings of indications 
of meaning, at first so slow and painfully conscious, will 
become unconscious and rapid, so that, as you read aloud 
to your class longer and longer selections, the meaning 
of longer and longer passages will be carried straight 
to their minds (as once to the Roman mind) without 
the need of any questioning from you, and with no 
translation into English on their part. And you will 
feel the great satisfaction of knowing that your class is 
on the direct road, and the only possible direct road, 
to the reading of the Latin language as the people 
who wrote it read it, — straight on without returning 
upon a word, with speed, and with pleasure. 

I should gladly treat this matter in detail, if time 
permitted, for I believe it to be of an importance diffi- 
cult to exaggerate ; but I have found by actual trial 
that to do this alone requires all the time that can pos- 
sibly be given to an address in these days of short 
sermons. I must therefore ask you, if I have suc- 
ceeded in making it seem desirable that there should be 
an examination of the method of teaching Latin and 
Greek, to take the trouble to look at a pamphlet,^ from 
the press of sMessrs. Ginn & Co., in which I have set 
forth in detail the method here sketched, and have 
added a special discussion of its application from the 
beginning of the preparatory course. 

One word, however, I must add now to what I have 
to-day said on the subject. We have agreed that the 



1 The Art of Heading Latin : How to Teach it. 



30 AIMS AND METHODS 

student must, for every reason, constantly be held to 
exact thinking. But it is a grievous error, permit me 
to say, to let him into your confidence by giving 
him to understand that what he is in pursuit of is 
mental discipline. , Mental discipline is not a good that 
appeals very powerfully to the young mind, with its 
fresh outlook on this new world. I do not think a nat- 
uralist would talk in this way to a young fellow who 
was about to take up the study of botany. He would 
rather tell him that it was very interesting to know that 
which botany has to teach, — the life and growth of 
plants. So we classicists had better tell our pupils that 
what they are to find in Latin is the life and growth of 
the human mind, seen at a great period, the results 
of which still abide ; and that in order to get at this, 
they must learn how the Romans made people under- 
stand what was in their minds. Cases, modes, tenses, 
then, are to he studied and treated in the preparatory 
school as heys to the literature, as direct conveyers of 
thought from mind to mind. In sa3dng this, I am not 
saying that the best way to learn how the Romans ex- 
pressed their thoughts by cases, modes, and tenses, is to 
study syntax unscientifically, or that an unscientific 
grammar is as good a tool, in what Professor Morris 
calls linguistic work, as a scientific grammar. I do not 
agree with him that the Andrews and Stoddard of our 
boyhood is as good a book of its kind as we ever had in 
our schools, or that, as he seems to hold, Goodwin's 
Grammar is superior only from the scientific point of 
view. Every gain in syntactical science is a gain for 
pedagogy; for it consists in a better understanding of 
the force of constructions, and a. truer knowledge of 
their actual historical relations. Bat this means that 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 31 

the exposition from which the young student is to 
learn these constructions can be at once sounder, and 
easier to apprehend and retain. 

We may safely say — and any of you will agree 
with me, who, like myself, were prepared for college on 
Crosby's Greek Grammar, and then put into Goodwin's 
Moods and Tenses on arriving there — that scientific 
clearness assists and inspires as much as it illumines. In 
my own experience, as a teacher of preparatory studies, 
and as a teacher in college, I have found that a mechan- 
ical and unscientific understanding of the Latin modes 
and tenses is a greater block to the rapid comprehension 
of a Latin writer, a more frequent cause of absolute 
inapprehension of his meaning, than any other cause 
except the wicked liberties taken with the structure of 
the Latin sentence by the modern method. 

We have at last, with much patience or impatience 
on your part, got our assumed boy into college, hav- 
ing equipped him, I hope, with a considerable power 
of reading easy Latin, together with a dawning love 
for that exact expression of thought touched with 
emotion or imagination which we call literature, — ^a 
larger perception of, and sympathy with, all that has 
been best in the human family, an awakened and grow- 
ing sense for the things of the mind. What now are 
his college instructors to do for him, to carry on worthily 
the work which you have begun in the preparatory 
school? 

They will still hold fast the two aims which you have 
held ; but they will also add, not too early in the curri- 
culum, one aim more, — the very one which I haA^e urged 
should not be introduced into the school. They will 



32 AIMS AND METHODS 

make provision for the scientific side of philological 
study, — philological study pursued, not as a training 
for science, but in the love of the results to be achieved 
through it. 

For the schools, then, to recapitulate, the two joint 
aims should be : — 

1. To prepare the student to read Greek and Latin 
with ease and speed. 

2. To rouse in him an interest in and love for the 
things which give Greece and Rome their power and 
place in the history of mankind. 

For the universities, to summarize in advance, the 
four aims should be : — 

1. To continue the work of training the student to 
read Greek and Latin with ease and speed. 

2. To read with him as much Greek and Latin as 
possible. 

3. To display to him as many aspects as possible of 
those civilizations which have given Greece and Rome 
their permanent place and power. 

4. To conduct him, if he has the bent for philological 
or archaeological science, into the field of research. 

To my mind each of the first two aims which the 
university teacher should set himself demands, in ad- 
vanced work, a method of procedure the general adop- 
tion of which I do not expect to see in the immediate 
future. 

Our students who elect Greek and Latin throughout 
their university course (and it is mainly of such students 
that we are now speaking) are occupied about eight 
years with these languages. I have urged that they 
sliould at the very beginning of their preparatory course 
be set upon a path that leads to the ability to understand 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 33 

Greek and Latin without translating, — as a student 
who has spent some paltry months in Germany expects 
as a matter of course to understand German. To my 
full conviction, the classical education is in one im- 
portant part a failure, if this ability is not attained to a 
considerable degree in season to allow at least the last 
two years of the university course to be devoted in 
part to a true reading of classical literature under the 
teacher's supervision. This means that, from as early 
as the beginning of the Junior year, students who 
have been well trained to this end (I speak only of 
such) should have opportunities to study without 
daily translation. The advantages are fourfold. First, 
the student, by constantly dealing with the Roman 
page, for example, without the intervention of English, 
gains much more rapidly in familiarity with the structure 
of the Roman sentence, and consequently in swiftness 
of comprehension of the Roman thought.^ Secondly, 
the acquaintance of much more of the literature can be 
made in this way, — about twice as much, I should infer 
from my own experiments. Thirdly, the student sub- 
stitutes a direct contemplation of the pictures presented 

1 The case is much less urgent, I concede, with Greek than with 
Latin, The order of the Greek sentence is not so different from that 
of the English that one cannot translate a long Greek period cur- 
rently as it stands, and in the very process be making advances in the 
power to read and understand without translating. The Roman classi- 
cal style, on the other hand, differs so entirely from the English style 
in its unfolding of the thought that the Latin sentence should always 
be read to the end before it is translated. But, except for an occa- 
sional stumbling-block, this preliminary reading of the Latin sentence 
in itself conveys the author's meaning to the rightly trained advanced 
student; and the remaining steps should naturally be to proceed to the 
next Latin sentence, and the next, — unless, indeed, one's aim is prac- 
tice in English composition, and not the study of Roman literature. 



34 AIMS AND METHODS 

by his author, in place of the contemplation of imperfect 
and slowly manufactured copies of his own making. 
Fourthly, this way of reading gives great pleasure. 
The more familiar one becomes with a foreign language, 
after the first feeling of mastery has arrived, the more 
his original delights him, and translation irks him. 

Of this matter, as I say in the pamphlet alluded to 
before, I wish that Professor Greenough would give a 
full discussion. It had long been my habit to read on 
with my classes each day, after finishing the set lesson, 
without translating, but with such grammatical and 
other comments as should ~make the meaning clear, 
and I had intended to break eventually with translation 
in the class-room in the work of advanced students, 
confining it to occasional brief written examinations 
during the term, and the final examination at the end 
of it ; but I should not yet have taken the step had it 
not been for Professor Greenough 's assurances that the 
plan had succeeded measurably in his own experience. 
As his method remains undescribed, let me state, as a 
possibly useful suggestion, the arrangement which I have 
reached, through an experience of nearly two years. 

A lesson is assigned for the whole class, varying in 
length according to the difficulty of the author, and 
increasing with the amount read. Of a difficult author, 
like Juvenal, the whole must be read aloud and com- 
mented upon in the class-room. In Pliny the younger, 
who will serve for a specimen of the treatment of an 
easier author, the maximum lesson reached (which was 
held for a good part of the term) was six pages. Each 
student, reading the whole lesson carefully in his study, 
marks every passage which he does not feel sure that he 
understands. In addition, he selects a passage, not ex- 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 35 

ceecling half a page in length, and prepares himself with 
pains to read it aload at the recitation, treating it as he 
would a piece of English literature. During this read- 
ing the rest of the class are advised to follow the reader, 
if possible, rather than the text; and the teacher, in 
particular, relies wholly upon him. Failures properly 
to express the meaning by correct grouping, by the bal- 
ancing of corresponding or antithetical members, by due 
emphasis, etc., etc., are corrected, as any other failures 
would be. Absolute failures to comprehend the author 
are very sure — even if a relation of mutual trust did 
not exist between teacher and student — to betray 
themselves in the delivery,^ and it is generally easy to 
detect precisely where and how the student went astray. 
Explanations are rarely given b}^ translating, but, in 
preference, others in the class are asked to explain the 
misinterpreted constructions, to point out the unnoticed 
correspondences or antitheses, to correct the false group- 
ing or false emphasis. Where, as seldom happens with 
advanced students, the difficulty lies in the mere mean- 
ing of a phrase or word, it seems to me to be generally 
better to paraphrase in Latin rather than in English, — 
yet under no iron rnle against the admission of that 
tongue. As we pass over the parts of the lesson 
which no one has prepared to read aloud, questions 
are asked by the class; or I myself, in the light of 



1 About this time Elmwood the Quaker, being recommended to him 
as one who would read Latin to him for the advantage of his conver- 
sation, attended liim every afternoon except Sundays. . . . Elm- 
wood complied with the directions, and improved himself by his attend- 
ance ; for he relates that Milton, having a curious ear, knew by his voice 
ichen he read ivhat he did not understand, and would stop him, and open the 
most difficult passages. — Johnson's Life of Hilton. 



36 ATMS AND METHODS 

the experience of former years, point out and meet 
difficulties. Let me illustrate. In the famous te con- 
sule passage in Juvenal (11, 33), I should ask the con- 
struction of te. If I were told that it was ablative 
absolute (we have Mayor's example for the confession 
that such calamities occur), I should ask for a different 
opinion, and should be pretty sure to find some one who 
had recognized consnle to be the imperative. That is 
as comprehensible an explanation as a translation would 
have been. Undoubtedly it takes more time. But, on 
the other hand, large parts of each lesson will require 
no explanation. And everywhere the student is brought 
into direct contact with his author, endeavoring to 
understand his thought as he wrote it, and to convey 
it directly, in all its confessedly untranslatable qualities, 
to me and the rest of the class. And only at intervals 
(in addition to the final examination at the end of the 
term) is an exercise in written translation conducted, — 
an exercise naturally aiming, when it does occur, at a 
more exacting standard of literary expression than expe- 
rience leads a teacher to hope for in daily oral work. 

With negligent students such a system would work 
ruin. But in the case of those who have conceived a 
fondness for the language, and have gained a command 
of it sufficient to lead them to elect it in the last two 
years of their course, the system produces a rapid gain 
in the power of understanding, and gives a sense of 
success which is sure to beget zest. As for my own 
share as teacher, I feel a far keener pleasure in an ex- 
cellent reading of an elegy of Catullus or an excellent 
declamation of a passage from Juvenal than in the best 
class-room translation I have known. And when (for 
repetition is pardonable in so important a matter), — - 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 37 

when shall we hope to have a true reading of Greek 
and Latm, if we cannot bring our students to this? if 
they can never get the flavor of a Homer or a Horace, 
but only of a compound of their own, made of the prod- 
ucts of a different soil and a different climate ? If no 
translation of Horace yet made is Horace, ought not the 
young men who are the choicest product of our classical 
training to be brought, in eight years, to a point at 
which they can read the real Horace? Incontroverti- 
bly "Yes," if it be possible. But possible it is. The 
way lies in plain sight. And by taking that way, and 
only so, can we have any considerable hope that our 
students will continue to love and read their Homer 
and their Horace and their Aristophanes and their 
Juvenal, when they come to give all but their stolen 
moments to their patients, their clients, their parish- 
ioners, their silks and cottons. 

But one definite test remains to be satisfied, in 
order to guarantee this method against the name of fad, 
— the test of translation of passages from the term's 
work, and of translation at sight, at the end of the term. 
And herein I find the best voucher for the system. For 
my advanced classes have gained in power in these re- 
spects since daily translation was abandoned.^ 

So much for the palpable and easy part of my sug- 
gestions. 

^ That wise predecessor of ours in the schoolmaster's art, Eoger 
Ascham, says (Second Booke, Teachyng the ready Way to the Latin 
Tonge), " After that your scholer, as I sayd before, shall come indeede, 
first to a readie perfitness in translating, then to a ripe and skilful! 
choice in marking out hys sixe pointes . . ., these books [Cicero, 
Terence, Plautus, Caesar, Livy], I would have him read now a good 
deale at every lecture [recitation] ; for he shall not now use dailie tranS' 
lation, but only construe againe, and parse, where ye suspect is any nede." 



38 AIMS AND METHODS 

Of tlie other side, that which deals with the develop- 
ing of the student's love of the intellectual life, it is dif- 
ficult to speak in definite words, as it is difficult so to 
speak on any other matter which touches things that do 
not fall within the domain of science. A man's educa- 
tion, to employ in part Walter Pater's phrase, becomes 
complete in proportion as his susceptibility to impressions 
conveyed by the best things in art, in literature, in life, 
increases in depth and variety. To help him to develop 
this power of receiving impressions from a great variety 
of the best things, we must ourselves feel keenly such 
of them as come within the range of Greek and Roman 
literature and life. But I have said only half the truth 
in saying that. We classicists are no more dependent 
upon the classics for our whole professional outfit than 
is our breakfast-table dependent for its supplies upon 
the contiguous garden and pasture. We may import 
our cheering cup from China ; and we ma}^ get a keen 
stimulus for literary study from Shakespeare or the 
more Roman Bacon, from Milton, from Wordsworth, 
nay even from Herrick, and Lovelace, and Waller. And 
if this be possible for us, so is it for those we teach. 
I met recently a student of mine of many years ago, 
who, speaking of his college course, thanked me for 
two things : first, that I had required him to commit to 
memory no small number of the Odes of Horace (which 
acquisition, made against his will, he had come to value 
and add to) ; second, that I had advised him to possess 
himself of Palgrave's "Golden Treasury of English Songs 
and Lyrics." The poorest teacher gets an occasional 
compliment, and this was not strictly my first. But it 
made me feel, more than anything else had done, that 
my work in those days liad not been without results. 



] 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 39 

And it is worth mentioning, since it points to an atti- 
tude toward the intellectual life which, as it seems to 
me, we who teach the classics are bound to take. We 
should deal with the literatures of Greece and Rome, 
not as a distinct and remote entity, but as a precious 
part of the most precious of all heritages, bringing the 
sense for literature to bear from whatever quarter. 

But we must by no means stop with the literature 
itself. For, as we have seen from the statement of the 
third aim of the university course, we must in every way 
develep the student's interest in, and broad sympathy 
with, the great range of ancient life, and we must, to 
that end, offer him not only courses in political history, 
but courses in Greek and Roman private life, courses 
at once scientifically and sympathetically arranged 
and taught. Above everything else in this field, we 
must offer him an opportunity to know one of the rare 
treasures of the human race, the greatest of all in its 
power of developing the true feeling for the best in art, 
namely, Greek and Roman sculpture — which, of course, 
practically means Greek sculpture. No one who does 
not know something of Greek sculpture really knows 
ancient life. The Greek mind shows itself as clearly in 
the frieze and pediment of the Parthenon as in the 
Antigone of Sophocles. No completely intelligent sur- 
vey of the rise and decline of the Greek character can 
be had without a study of the sculptures. You find cut 
into visible form all those tendencies which you detect 
in the literature and the history. The importance of 
these things, even to one who has not known Greek 
literature, may be seen in the attention which the great 
reading public gives to such papers as Mrs. Mitchell's on 
Greek sculpture, and Mr. Stillman's on Greek coinage. 



40 AIMS AND METHODS 

There are abundant signs that the world is coming to a 
conception how large a range human life covers, and of 
what interest Greece and Rome are to the modern world, 
which is their intellectual child. Our students, then, must 
have an opportunity to study Greek art. Of course, in 
teaching it, or giving such an introduction to it as is in 
our 230wer, we should proceed under scientific methods, 
metlpds comparative and historical. We shall begin 
with archaic sculpture, not with the Hermes of Praxi- 
teles. But we shall not dwell upon scientific method 
as we do so. As we come to the Hermes, we shaJl not 
thank heaven that its discovery has added to the terri- 
tory upon which scientific method may occupy itself, 
but rather that a great Avork from the master's own 
hand has been discovered, to be a delight to us, and a 
fresh witness to the matchless artistic power of the 
Greek mind. Yet at the same time, — let me say in 
passing, — we shall gladly avail ourselves of the help 
of modern science on the practical side, and employ the 
lantern. I understand that there are those who have 
not thought well of its use in studying ancient life and 
art. Such a feeling, I am sure, must pass away. No one 
objects to referring a student to engravings of works of 
art, still less to photographs. But the lantern will ena- 
ble your class to see, with great truthfulness, so far 
as a single point of view at a time goes, a statue re- 
moved from us by the width of ocean, and, further, will 
enable you, instead of referring them to a cut or photo- 
graph in a library which can be put before only one 
man at a time, to talk to them all together in the mimic 
presence of the object. What is desirable now is not 
to discourage the use of the lantern, but to make slides 
inexpensive and accessible. 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 41 

That which I have said of the importance of courses 
in Greek art is, of course, clearly true also for courses 
in Greek and Roman life. The actual helpfulness of 
such courses in quickening the interest of students and 
contributing to the effectiveness of a department has 
already been shown in our oldest college, through the 
work of a professor, whose address on The Realia of 
Greek Literature, delivered before the Massachusetts 
Teachers' Association in 1882, some of you may have 
had the pleasure of hearing. 

How far these things have a bearing on the secondary 
schools I am not positive. It is clear that the system- 
atic study of archaeology and of ancient life should not 
be attempted by them ; but I am sure that it would 
add greatly to his sense of the reality of his subject and 
to his interest in the literature and history which he 
is studying, if a boy who was reading Csesar and Cicero 
might see, from authentic portraits, how the man Caesar, 
the man Pompey, the man Cicero, looked. I am sure 
that when a boy comes to the Catiline of Sallust it will 
add to the interest of the story if he sees, even in the 
copy of a rude woodcut, how that prison to-day appears 
in which the conspirators were strangled. As he reads 
in Homer of gods and goddesses, it will help his com- 
prehension and greatly increase his interest to see sculp- 
tures that shall represent to him how the gods looked 
to the Greek imagination. Some day I suspect these 
aids will be used in the schools as irregular auxiliaries, 
and even to-day they should be given, with all system, 
in college instruction. Though few colleges are as yet 
equipped with teachers specially trained in classical 
archceology, yet I feel strongly that those professors 
of Greek and Latin who feel the importance of these 



42 AIMS AND METHODS 

things should offer introductory courses in them, with 
a proper sense of their own inadequacy, but a high 
sense of the greatness of their subject, until, through 
the interest which such courses are sure to arouse, they 
shall make it evident to our larger colleges and univer- 
sities that each of them should have a professor of clas- 
sical archaeology, solely devoted to his specialty. 

And now, under the head of our fourth aim, I come 
to speak of a matter in which I count upon the 
satisfaction of having Professor Morris wholly with 
me : I mean the importance of the scientific study 
of the forms and the syntax of the classical tongues. 
For those studies we must expressly provide, on two 
accounts. A true interest in classical literature, suffi- 
cient to hold the student to his classical work, after 
passing the line of liberty in that system of election 
to which, in some degree, all the world is coming, will 
be likely to beget in him a desire to know how these 
things have come to be as they are -7- a spirit of scien- 
tific curiosity. But besides this, — and it is a matter of 
importance, — there is a certain danger, of which I have 
not 5^et spoken, in the study of literature and art pur- 
sued exclusively, — the danger of dilettanteism, of the 
begetting of a spirit not robust, patient in investi- 
gation, long-suffering. The dilettante spirit does not 
thrive in the very pure and stimulating air of phonetic 
and syntactic science. These sciences are, consequently 
(though perhaps Dr. Johnson would no longer agree), 
subjects of great importance to a man who has been 
carried far enough along in literary studies to have 
conceived a curiosity about them. For graduate work, 
in particular, they are pre-eminently fitted, inasmuch 
as they offer definite problems to be solved ; and this 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 43 

is the reason why Germany is so prolific in them. 
I cannot, therefore, but marvel that a public teacher 
of literature of high authority should occasionally go 
out of his own excellent way to censure the doing of 
such work. I should rather endeavor to interest as 
many students as possible in these subjects ; and, in 
particular, I should urge them upon all who intend, 
in turn, to be teachers, not in the least — Heaven 
forbid ! — that they may give instruction upon them 
in the preparatory schools, but rather that, having 
satisfied their own curiosity by intimate acquaintance, 
and having learned how difficult these things are, and 
as yet largely 8uh iudice, they may be content to leave 
instruction in phonetics, above all, very nearly out of 
the curriculum of the preparatory school. A little 
knowledge of Grimm's law is useful and serviceable as 
adding to the interest of the young student. But I 
greatly question whether the grammars themselves have 
not gone too far in the matter of the science of forms, 
and added to the subjects which the young mind is 
necessarily to attack other subjects that have no bear- 
ing whatever upon the matter of prime importance, 
the reading of Latin and Greek,, and that are far better 
treated in systematic courses after a large field of the 
literatures has been traversed, and data of considera- 
ble amount have been accumulated. At the risk of 
being accounted a backslider from the sx3irit of the 
age, I shall say frankly that it seems to me that the sci- 
entific spirit has got altogether too strong a hold upon 
elementary classical work, and is proceeding to offer to 
babes and sucklings things that are almost hidden 
from the wise and prudent. It would not be a bad limi- 
tation to establish, that, while everything in the ele- 



44 AIMS AND METHODS 

ineiitary grammar should be true, so as never to need to 
be unlearned, but only sometime to be more fully appre- 
hended, yet there should be nothing in it that should 
not have a direct bearing upon the primary aim, the 
acquiring of the ability really to read the languages 
studied. And, as a second corollary from what I have 
said, I should add that the study of such books as 
Sellar's Virgil, and Freeman's Methods of Historical 
Study, and Trollope's Cicero (in spite of whatever de- 
fects), books dealing with the literary and historical 
side alone, would be of greater practical service to 
the preparatory teacher than the reading of books 
upon comparative philology; though it would be excel- 
lent if he were to work in both fields. And yet I beg 
that you will not forget that I said at the outset that 
my own special interest is in precisely such things as I 
would exclude from the ^preparatory school, and that, if 
I am misled, it is by an error of judgment that does not 
arise from natural prejudice. 

But I cannot finally dismiss the subject of the work 
of the preparatory school with a statement so one-sided 
and depressing as this. The school and the university 
have a common aim, and the gain of either brings a 
change in the other. The improved methods of teach- 
ing in the schools have already made it possible 
to read larger quantities of the classics in the uni- 
versities, and in a freer and juster temper. Results 
still greater, though slower to realize, will in time flow 
to the schools from the enlarging curriculum and the 
enlarging spirit of the universities. More and more, 
students who have chosen the profession of teaching 
will find themselves interested in the active philological 
or historical work of the day, and will return to the 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 45 

universities as graduates, to undertake such research 
themselves. And more and more they will carry away 
into their subsequent lives such a spirit as will leave 
no difference of aim between the leisure hours of the 
high school teacher and the leisure hours of the univer- 
sity teacher. The German gymnasien produce work of 
the highest order. To say nothing of the monographs 
which every year contributes to the progress of investi- 
gation, the latest and most important summary of Latin 
syntax, that of Schmalz, is by the director of what we 
should call a high school ; the one great sketch of his- 
torical Latin syntax, that of Drager, is by a director ; 
and the most comprehensive treatment of Latin gram- 
mar as a wdiole, that of Kiihner, is by an upper teacher. 
Such men prepare their students for the universities, 
and they prepare them well ; but, under the goad of the 
love of science, they accomplish, in the scant leisure of 
a laborious life, work which is the envy and the re- 
proach of many an American university teacher. And, 
whether it be cause or effect (it is not wholly either), 
the true feeling exists in Germany, that the position of 
the director of a high school is an honor not different in 
kind from the position of a university professor. We in 
this country have difficulties of all sorts to contend with 
(among which not the least is the debasing of the pro- 
fession of teaching by young men who do not intend to 
pursue it), and, in view of the gains of the last twenty 
years, we have far greater reason for cheer than for 
gloom ; but in the day when our high schools and our 
universities shall carry on the work of investigation side 
by side, both will stand higher in the public eye, and 
in both will life bring greater satisfactions. 

And so the creed we have reached for the educa- 



46 AIMS AND METHODS 

tiou of our classical students and for the life-work 
of our classical teachers, includes, in due order and 
proportion, both literature and philological investi- 
gation. But let us not, in our love for the lat- 
ter, for a moment think of undervaluing the former, 
and defending it as only the hand-maiden of science. 
To touch for the last time the main note of my 
paper, let us render unto Csesar the things that aje 
Caesar's, but let us keep for the study of Latin and 
Greek the things that belong to them. We shall never 
propitiate the Cerberus of modern education by assur- 
ing him that we are, after all, not humanistic, but scien- 
tific, at least in the four years .spent in the schools. 
Cerberus will answer us that if all we claim to do is to 
train men for scientific inquiry, then they had better 
get their training in that field which contains the 
things they wish to know about ; that if we have noth- 
ing to offer which the natural sciences do not them- 
selves offer, we had better begone. I think so myself. 
But the fact is, if we will openly say it and stand to it, 
that, as the scientific teacher has things to offer of 
which classical study knows nothing, so we have things 
to offer of which natural science knows nothing ; and, 
furthermore, that these things come nearer home to the 
heart and daily life, supposing one to be the average 
man, not the worker in applied science, nor a man with 
an inborn passion to fathom the secrets of comparative 
philolog}^ or molecular attraction ; that they are vital ; 
that they meet us at every turn, unless our lives are 
solely occupied in getting bread ; and that, even in the 
getting of that bread, they meet many a man far more 
closely than does natural or mathematical science. Yet 
we can compel no one to devote his whole education to 



IN CLASSICAL STUDY. 47 

these tilings. On whatever system prepared for college, 
men are at some point in their course to be free to de- 
vote themselves to whatsoever attracts them. They 
may perhaps choose the classics, they may perhaps 
choose science ; but those who study science, if they 
are not misled by the unthinking, will study it for its 
ideal side, because it has an intellectual charm for them, 
because it is one field of inquiry of the boundlessly 
curious human mind, not from any mistaken notion that 
it has more to do with the daily life of the average un- 
technical man than humanistic study; while those who 
study the classics, if they do so on any other ground than 
established tradition, will do it because in the classics 
we have the recorded experience of the human race at 
a great period of intellectual achievement, a period of 
unsurpassed power in putting that experience into words 
good for all time ; in short, they will study these things 
mainly in the old humanistic spirit. When Greek and 
Latin cease to stand for theJiumanities, if ever this shall 
happen, their day is over, until there shall come a new 
Renaissance of the human spirit. An age of scholasti- 
cism has been rescued by them. An age of materialism 
may yet be rescued by them. But I do not believe it 
will come to that. I recognize no such sign of the 
times. On the contrary, I agree with Professor Morris, 
— and it is a pleasure to me, in closing, to agree with 
him, — who wrote to me recently, " It seems to me that 
we are certainly going to see, in some form or other, a 
classical revival in this country. " 



AIMS AND METHODS 



IN 



CLASSICAL STUDY, 



BY 



WILLIAM GARDNEE HALE, 

PROFKSSOR OP THB LATIN LaNGUAGB AND LITERATURE IN 

Cornell University. 



^>Kc 



BOSTON: 
PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY. 

1888. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 598 496 7 




